It's a bit premature to start bagging untried strategies! And this one has left the door open on troop numbers and time lines related to eventual guaranteed success.

We could increase our troop numbers, but only as a few hundred special forces tasked with simply destroying (overnight, broad acre zero spray) the taliban's poppy crops, to further deny them practically the only source of funding that keeps them in the conflict.

After that, I believe we need to maintain and improve allied presence at all known border crossings, to hit very hard at miscreants as they cross over.

And where remotely controlled, self destructing, cost effective, sacrificial drones equipped with infrared and night vision would become almost indispensable. And allow us to take out I.U.D's and their placement personnel, before they are buried/bury them!?

After that, I believe the only way to get Pakistan onside, is to stop paying them to do what any civilized nation would do!

Or if they'd rather, via their aggressive posturing, include them as sabre rattling, cage rattling, nuclear armed, Taliban sympathetic, (Khan inspired, motivated or manipulated) covert combatants?

With largely unmanned, massively porous borders/border crossings!
Alan B.

What this twit forgets is that the Taliban is an extremist group.